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Updated: June 23, 2025
"They ought to put her out!" he growled indignantly. "She is compromising God with her absurd entreaties." But in spite of his annoyance, he had to endure her living in his household, and at the same time had taken great pains to prevent her nationality being known outside. It was a severe trial for Don Marcelo to be obliged to keep silent when at table with his family.
Whom did she meet when she was on the street? . . . Without dropping her pose as a martyr, with the same woebegone look and drooping mouth, she was talking, and talking treacherously. The torment of Don Marcelo in being obliged to listen to the enemy harbored within his gates! . . . The French had been vanquished in Lorraine and in Belgium at the same time.
In the rough and tumble fight which ensued the padre came out ahead; and after giving the culprits a severe homily on the sin of attacking a priest, they were pardoned, Marcelo becoming one of his best and most faithful friends thereafter. Robinson says Viader was "a good old man, whose heart and soul were in proportion to his immense figure."
He did not even tell Argensola who knew of the incidents of the trans-atlantic passage. When he least expected it, Don Marcelo found himself at the end of that delightful and proud existence which his son's presence had brought him. The fortnight had flown by so swiftly!
When Don Marcelo with optimistic enthusiasm announced the end of the war in the following Spring or Summer in four months at the outside the Russian shook his head. "It will be long . . . very long. It is a new war, the genuine modern warfare.
The gray and unbending soldiers who, until then, had been ignoring the existence of Don Marcelo, looked at him with interest, now that he was in intimate conversation with a member of the General Staff. He perceived that these men were about to humanize themselves by casting aside temporarily their inexorable and aggressive automatonism.
True kindness consists in being cruel, because then the terror-stricken enemy gives in sooner, and so the world suffers less." Don Marcelo shrugged his shoulders before this sophistry. In the doorway, the captain gave some orders to a soldier who soon returned with a bit of chalk which had been used to number the lodging places.
The proud father, because of the interest which his son was inspiring, began to feel a glimmer of sympathy with the man. A pity that he should select so unerringly and appropriate the choicest things in the castle! Near the head of the bed, Don Marcelo saw lying upon a book of devotions forgotten by his wife, a medallion containing another photograph.
Don Marcelo recognized him with surprise. Commandant Blumhardt, too! . . . But immediately he excused the act. He supposed it was only natural that this official should want to take something away from the castle, since the Count had set the example. Besides, he took into account the quality of the objects which he was appropriating.
"Humanity accustoms itself easily to trouble," said Argensola, "provided that the trouble lasts long enough. . . . In this lies our strength." Don Marcelo was not in sympathy with the general resignation. The war was going to be much shorter than they were all imagining.
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